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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23181163">your milk's in my mouth</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina'>firstaudrina</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Anal Fingering, Angst, BDSM, Bruises, Chains, Collars, Face Slapping, Gloves, Hurt No Comfort, Infidelity, Leather Kink, Manhandling, Masks, Masturbation, Multi, No Aftercare, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Restraints, Sensation Play, Voyeurism, Whipping, Whipping with belt</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 16:01:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,371</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23181163</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick returns for a repeat visit with the sex demons at Dorian's.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Nicholas Scratch/De Sade/Salo, Nicholas Scratch/Sex Demons</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Start Reading</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>your milk's in my mouth</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This fic came about while rewatching s3 + listening to a podcast about kink + thinking a lot of thoughts about trauma &amp; how consensual BDSM can be therapeutic. Nick is not in a good headspace in this fic, which is set somewhere between 3x03 and 3x04, but he’s trying! </p>
<p>Warnings in the tags, but just to be safe: BDSM (all the letters in the acronym!), including restraints (chains, cuffs, collars), masks, whipping with a belt, slapping, scratching, kicking, mention of physical bruises &amp; marks, some sensation play, leather kink (gloves/boots), fingering, masturbation, manhandling, angst, infidelity, PTSD. Mostly hurt without comfort &amp; refusal of aftercare. All consensual.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Salo restrains. De Sade insinuates. </p>
<p>Sometimes Salo’s boot, with its stiletto heel and diamond-flat sole, presses exclamation point bruises into Nick’s skin. She likes to hold down and be held, enjoys the tension that waits at the very end of a leash. De Sade gets inside Nick. He whispers into Nick’s ear, worms under his skin. They can do that, sex demons. They can infer and intuit. There’s never a misstep because they can sense what he wants and stop if it turns. They feed off it. They drink up his sweat, his pounding heart, his broken little moans.</p>
<p>Nick came to see them crusted in ancient blood. It was in his eyes and his mouth. It had dried in his hair so each curl was ridged and spiky; his skin felt so tight that every expression pulled. When he wet his lips, they tasted sour and earthy, but a little sweet, too — like syrup.</p>
<p>De Sade’s hands skated up Nick’s thighs, nudging aside the absinthe bottle, as Salo’s traveled down over his chest. Together they pushed and peeled his shirt off, De Sade below and Salo above. Blood had seeped through the fabric and dotted Nick’s chest in dark, flaking splotches. De Sade leaned up to lick at one brownish-red spot, his tongue pointed. But not forked.</p>
<p>Salo has short, sharp horns protruding from the ridges of her forehead, nestled beneath the stiff white curls of her hair. She wears patent leather gloves up to her biceps and a starched crinoline, her bodice made up of straps and laces. She’s so into restraints that she keeps her neck shackled to her wrists with a weighty chain that’s always swinging, hitting against the buckles of her bodice with a deceptively delicate clink. </p>
<p>De Sade is armored. Gaps of skin show between leather and mesh, green-tinged and pale. His shoulders sport spikes that mimic his horns, which curve into his coiffed hair and gleam like onyx. He wears gloves, too, but his are plainer, supple and oiled. “The same?” he asks, when Nick comes back.</p>
<p>The first time, Salo bound Nick’s forearms together behind him, thrusting his shoulders back so forcefully they ached, and his fingertips tingled. De Sade dragged him around by the hair, Nick shuffling on the stone floor until his knees were scraped up even through his jeans, darkly bruised. He got them both off with his mouth, one after another.</p>
<p>“More,” Nick says.</p>
<p>Salo winds a sleek black silk ribbon around his throat and ties it in a bow at the nape of his neck. Over it goes a slim silver collar so light he can barely feel it — until a tug on its chain lead snatches his breath, silver cutting into the flesh below his Adam’s apple. His wrists are linked together next, a handy tool for pulling him forward, which De Sade does; he affixes the chain to a hook on the wall so Nick stands facing the stone with arms raised, shoulders straining at their joints. He senses them behind him and shivers. Gloved fingertips trace and twirl over the tensed muscles of his back, but he doesn’t know who’s touching him.</p>
<p>A mask slides over his face: cool, suffocating leather that he can just barely see out of, his vision boxed in and blurred. He breathes in and suddenly eases. It makes him feel secure, somehow, to be made so vulnerable. The irony doesn’t escape him. </p>
<p>Salo and De Sade confer about him in theatrical stage whispers, wondering openly what they’ll do next while Nick waits, hands flexing into fists, full of eager dread. Absinthe has made everything elastic and green. His lips are dry like having too much salt or citrus, a juicy film on his teeth. He’s already sweating. </p>
<p>“Hot oil?” De Sade suggests gleefully. “Candle wax? Better yet — the flame?”</p>
<p>Salo tsks and pulls the leash, sharp and short. Nick gulps against it. “Whip,” she decides, and then pauses, Nick ignorant of the silent communication happening behind him. </p>
<p>“Oh, yes,” De Sade coos. “Yes, you’re right — of course.”</p>
<p>An arm brushes Nick’s bare side. Moments later, butter-soft leather gloves finger the buckle of his belt. It clicks open in a smooth twist of the hand, and the belt pulls free. </p>
<p>“Yes,” De Sade says again. “Inspired.”</p>
<p>The belt cracks down against Nick. Everything in his body ramps up instantly — pulse rushing and adrenaline spiking, skin prickling with perspiration and throat tightening — but his brain goes silent. For one moment, brief as a flickering flame, Nick hears nothing but the sound of leather on skin.</p>
<p>Usually, it starts in his head like the buzzing of a thousand flies. So much of Hell is rotting meat; there were always flies. Even in the prison at the Academy, there were skittering things that clicked and rustled in the dark; bugs that gathered inside Nick and poured from his lips with Satanic intention. The path of their legs a crawling tickle on his skin. When it all gets to be too much, he hears it again. Feels it, inside and out. Buzzing.</p>
<p>Someone steps up close behind Nick, but this time he knows who it is. Salo likes to keep a leash-length between them, and anyway the sharp tip of a spike is pressing ever so slightly into Nick’s arm. “What have you done?” De Sade asks, chilly. Chilling.</p>
<p>Nick’s mouth, already dry, goes drier. His tongue passes over his lips, does nothing. “What?”</p>
<p>Salo pulls, cutting off Nick’s breath in a gasp. “Manners.”</p>
<p>Nick’s fists clench so his short nails press into his palms. The shackles have warmed to him now and feel like nothing, but tension is a straight arrow from his fingertips to his feet. He does not say <i>sir</i> or <i>mistress</i>. He waits. </p>
<p>“You don’t get something for nothing, Mr. Scratch,” De Sade says, which Nick does not like. He has no interest in being addressed with his own name. They can call him all kinds of things, whatever they want, but not that. “The punishment must fit the crime. And so we must know what you have done.”</p>
<p><i>This</i>, Nick thinks, and they pick up on it. He doesn’t know how it works — telepathy, or something more ambiguous. Maybe they can smell his guilt. All he knows is that as soon as it crosses his mind, the energy in the room changes. It becomes charged, simmers and crackles like the air before a storm. Despite his sweat, Nick breaks out in gooseflesh, struck with cold fear. It’s what he imagines being sick to feel like. It’s having to face the part of himself he’s most scared of: the deepest and darkest part, sour with his own dishonesty.</p>
<p>And even with all that, he’s hard, his thighs and stomach hot, because he knows a little of what’s coming. </p>
<p>“Are you being very bad right <i>now</i>?” De Sade wonders, interested. “You are, aren’t you?”</p>
<p>Nick shuts his eyes. He tries to block it out, but it comes anyway: <i>what if Sabrina finds out?</i> He can almost see her face, the horror in it, the repulsion. His teeth grind. He rolls his shoulders forward and hunches his spine, tries to ask without asking for his punishment to commence. </p>
<p>Salo is a little bored. Her heels click against the stone as she paces, chains making their metallic noise. The collar shifts around on Nick’s neck whenever she moves. De Sade hasn’t budged from his place at Nick’s shoulder. Lightly, very lightly, he touches Nick’s side. “Your prurience,” he purrs. “Yes. You’re terribly ashamed. Most witches don’t mind, but you do. How many has it been? Must be quite the number.”</p>
<p>Nick doesn’t answer, so Salo pulls tight, reaching out at the same time to pinch him high up on his ribs where the skin is thin. It hurts but not <i>enough</i>; Nick wants more and knows what he has to do to get it.</p>
<p>“I don’t know,” Nick grits out, honestly. “I don’t remember.” </p>
<p>When he came out of the woods and into the Academy, after his baptism, he’d gone a little wild. So few people had touched him and then suddenly so many of them wanted to. Who was Nick to refuse? He got drunk on it, their hands and the press of their bodies, someone’s fingers in his hair and legs around his waist. He never felt bad about it before. But now it’s — </p>
<p>Different.</p>
<p>“Why don’t you tell us?” De Sade suggests. Nick can hear the dull sound of leather against leather. He hopes it’s someone wrapping the belt around their hand, readying it. A spark zips along his shoulders. “As many as you can.”</p>
<p>Nick tests his weight against the chains and listens to his breathing, which seems to whistle through his throat and lungs. He decides to work backwards. “Dorcas Night,” he says, and then gets his reward.</p>
<p>The belt is nearly silent as it sails through the air and its abrupt contact sounds deceptively soft. It surprises him more than it hurts, belt curving ever so slightly around his torso before it retracts. Nick cries out and then sucks in a breath, feels somehow that his chest opens up even as he curls inward. </p>
<p>He gives them all the names he can remember. Prudence and Agatha, to complete the set; Ambrose and Luke before the Feast of Feasts, all of them tangled together; Althea Rae the week before term; those two guys whose names he never got at the Litha festival; and on and on and on. For each confession, he gets another sweet-brutal strike, his skin warming to it like a sunburn, hot to the touch. His back takes the brunt, but also his ass and thighs, the impact lessened somewhat by his jeans but with force enough to sting anyway. </p>
<p>Salo must be the one wielding the belt, because Nick can hear the rattling of her irons. She’s breathing hard with giddy excitement. Every hit wrests a noise from Nick: a cry, a grunt, something hurting and wordless. He tries to twist his chains around his hands to support himself, swaying between the belt and the wall. It’s not enough. He wants more. But at a certain point, he just — he falters. He forgets someone, runs out of names. How could he possibly remember all of them?</p>
<p>He imagines what Sabrina would say if she knew he couldn’t even remember all of them. She would probably make a joke of it, and by extension make a joke of him. She thought what he had done before her meant something about her, so she had to make it mean something about him instead.</p>
<p>He’s a flirt. He’ll flirt with anyone, witches and warlocks alike, the whole Academy. He’ll fuck anyone, even two at once. One of each. Nick is bad, always has been — a <i>bad boy</i>, Sabrina says with affection. Prudence declaring him an <i>idiot harlot</i> was as close as she got to a pet name. Father Blackwood used to love him, which was obviously bad news. Satan plucked him out for a singular devotion. Nick was bad because he wasn’t mortal, because he slept around and around, because if someone asked, he’d let anything inside him, even the Dark Lord. </p>
<p>He did it so she’d forgive him. So she’d trust him. To keep her from having to rule in Hell alongside Lucifer — even though she picked the crown back up almost as soon as he was gone. </p>
<p>His throat works in a strange way. It isn’t nerves, or the repeated tug of the silver collar. It feels almost like a fist has formed inside his esophagus, strangling him from the inside out. His eyes sting. “Again,” he demands impatiently, voice choked. He yanks a little on the shackles. “Again!”</p>
<p>Heels stutter on stone as the next strike stops mid-air. There is a low whistle of disappointment. Nick screws his eyes shut, realizing his mistake. He could fix it — he could grovel — but then he thinks he’d rather see what happens if he doesn’t.</p>
<p>The tsking of someone’s tongue precedes slow, clicking steps. Hands land lightly on Nick’s abused back, leather against blossoming bruises and little scrapes, spots where the skin has opened ever so slightly. He inhales sharply at the tender pain of it. “Did you really think,” De Sade breathes, close to Nick’s ear, “that you could issue commands to <i>us</i>?”</p>
<p>The point of his tongue flicks against one raw scratch. Nick bites the inside of his lip and says nothing.</p>
<p>“I asked you something.” De Sade’s hands turn hard, raking down Nick’s back so roughly that he shouts, a ragged thing that peters off into a moan. “But you won’t apologize, I know.” Gentle now, he pets Nick with long, soothing strokes. “You prefer trouble.” He nips at Nick’s ear. “Yes?”</p>
<p>He fusses with the black silk ribbon around Nick’s neck, adjusting the bow and following the trailing ends down between his shoulder blades. Fingertips walk to the small of Nick’s back and then start to work past the waistband of his jeans. It’s a tight fit, not much space to spare between fabric and flesh, and the pull makes them dig into his stomach in front.</p>
<p>“<i>Yes?</i>” De Sade cajoles. He gropes Nick’s ass lasciviously, setting off a bright spark of pain from another bruise. Nick tenses, and wants. </p>
<p>“Yes,” he says, though what he means is <i>keep going</i>. He doesn’t know if he wants trouble or if he just doesn’t know how to want anything else. “I don’t know.”</p>
<p>The tip of De Sade’s leather-clad finger pushes against Nick but not quite into him. He teases and circles, persistent and slow but with clear intent, the glove making his finger seem too thick, too blunt. Nick’s not ready, nowhere near, but he wants to be. He feels pried open and shivering and stupid, in part because there is a curious detachment to De Sade’s touch. Nick thinks De Sade could walk away right now, leave him here like this and not even care. “Aw,” De Sade laughs, pulling his hand free. “Poor thing.”</p>
<p>Rough and sudden, he shoves Nick’s jeans down his thighs without unfastening them, briefs too. Denim abrades Nick’s skin, threads breaking and button pinging against the floor. He’s left with a dizzy kind of sensitivity on all that newly-naked skin but not enough time to readjust. Salo fists his hair again to jerk his head back and with her other hand looses his chains from the hook on the wall. She whips him around and hauls him forward, Nick stumbling and almost tripping. He catches himself last minute, but when Salo wrenches him forward again, he knows she was trying to knock him off balance. </p>
<p>“On your knees,” she orders, and Nick goes in an inelegant lurch. He’s bound up and unbalanced, jeans in a strict tangle around his thighs and heavy shackles dragging him down. He lands hard on knees already purpling from the last time he was here. When he looks up, she’s taking him in with a pleased sneer, eyes traveling from his mussed hair to his red cheeks and over his chest, rapidly rising and falling with his unregulated breath. He’s a mess; he’s exactly what they made of him.</p>
<p>Salo squats to cup his chin, then urges his lips apart by pressing hard on the hinge of his jaw. She sticks two fingers in his mouth so he’ll know just how the leather tastes; his tongue curls around her knuckles, flirts along the stitching. When he moans, she snatches her hand back and slaps him.</p>
<p>“I didn’t say you could look,” she says. The side of her boot knocks into his wrist, demoting him from hands to forearms. His body is almost too inverted, forehead nearly on the ground and back spidering with tension from its sharp arch. The mask narrows his field of vision to a blur of gray floor. Then the shining point of her boot places itself directly beneath him. “Kiss.”</p>
<p>Nick lowers his head down slowly, slowly. There’s no bullshit with Salo. She tells Nick what to do and he does it, black and white. Easy. He stays where he is when she steps back, letting his face rest on the cool, dusty stone. The dip between his shoulder blades is nearly concave, his hips raised high. He’s still, and trembling. He feels very — available. Open.</p>
<p>“Pretty thing, isn’t he,” De Sade muses. Nick hears a click and a squeezing, squelching sound. Heat sweeps through him like pins and needles, his stomach clenching with it. His erection has been mostly ignored, pulsing forgotten between his legs, but now he’s keenly aware of it. His position offers him no friction, just the occasional brush against his own thighs. He doesn’t always come when he’s here; sometimes he doesn’t want to. Today he’s pent up, hungry. </p>
<p>De Sade — and it’s always him, so Nick knows even though he can’t see — rests his now-slick, still-gloved hand on Nick’s ass for a moment. Then he spanks him, just once, loud in the breathy quiet. Nick whimpers, more from anticipation than hurt. “Now, now,” De Sade murmurs, and slides a finger into him.</p>
<p>Nick suppresses the sound he makes so it’s just a strangled thing half-caught in his throat. It’s almost nothing, really; Nick’s done worse, taken more, but the initial push is always slightly strange, his body still uncertain. Something making space for itself in him. The stretch isn’t painful, exactly, but acute. Tight. Burning a little as De Sade drags his finger out and in again, but Nick could take it harder. He always could. He wants to sink back onto De Sade’s fingers, their cruel and careless caress. </p>
<p>“A reputation well-earned.” Salo trails the belt loosely over Nick’s prone body, just letting its edges snag against him. “Give him another.”</p>
<p>De Sade isn’t gentle, but he’s thorough. He crooks his fingers, twists; he drives deep into Nick and lays him open. Because there is nowhere else he’s being touched or tormented, Nick can only focus on that — and it starts to feel like there’s nothing else to him, his body floating and limbs tingling, nothing except that steady and persistent fucking of fingers. Even so, it’s almost impersonal. The glove is a barrier keeping them from being skin to skin, both sensation-deadening and a little obscene: that thick leather inside Nick and him so conscious of it, the way the glove doesn’t quite move in time with De Sade’s fingers, but always half a moment behind. </p>
<p>“I think perhaps he enjoys his punishment too much,” De Sade remarks. To make his point, his fingers curl against Nick’s prostate, curl and stroke again in a ruthless undulation that makes Nick shudder and bow. It’s like conjuring — there are sparks all over him. “But what can one expect from such a wanton?”</p>
<p>“You can never displease them enough,” Salo sighs.</p>
<p>Nick rocks into it, his hands scrambling against stone, forgetting himself. “Fuck me,” he whines, but all he gets is soft laughter. </p>
<p>De Sade has never put anything in Nick besides fingers and, once, that pointed tongue; Nick has some boundaries, whatever the witches’ bathroom wall supposedly says about him. Though he’s not sure it makes a difference. It wouldn’t to Sabrina. </p>
<p>“No, I think this is all you shall have.” Even as he speaks, De Sade pulls away, sitting back and then standing, leaving Nick alone. “You have been unaccountably rude and disobedient.” </p>
<p>Salo kicks Nick over onto his back. It pushes the air from his lungs, but before he can regain it, De Sade has grabbed his wrist and smeared oil onto his fingers. He leads Nick’s hand down between his legs, where he willingly goes; pushes two fingers into himself unthinkingly. The chain of his cuffs slithers over his thigh. A ribbon of oil drizzles over his stomach and chest, De Sade dropping down to spread it over his skin, make him shine. “You can manage yourself.”</p>
<p>He can do as he’s told.</p>
<p>Salo jerks his jeans to his calves but doesn’t remove them, instead stepping on the scrunched-down fabric to pin him where he is. Nick’s legs fall apart as much as they can, a contained sprawl, and he slides his free hand around his cock. Almost as fast, Salo takes half a step forward and plants her heel on the back of his hand. “No,” she says. “Just the other. And if you can’t manage it that way, nothing at all.”</p>
<p>Nick swallows and lets go. He reclines on one elbow so the hand between his thighs can angle itself better, clutching the other into a self-controlled fist. He doesn’t actually love doing it to himself, not when he can always find someone, not when he has magic, but being told to — and then having them watch him —</p>
<p>His knees draw up slightly, stomach caught in a half-crunch that makes his entire body start to shiver and shake. He holds himself there even as his abs ache, three fingers driving into him, not holding back or playing around. The arm keeping him propped up grinds into the ground; his knuckles rasp against the stone. He’s never come just from this before. Not on Lupercalia; not as a plaything for the Weird Sisters, with their endless creativity; not on a bed; not with a real lover. And to think that he could on the floor, filthy and sweating, red-faced and humiliated with his clothes ripped off. His pulse spikes at the thought, heart pounding so hard it steals his breath. </p>
<p>What would Sabrina think if she saw him like this? Nick on his back, writhing and tossing his head. His cock straining for attention, dripping. Hurting himself with how fast his fingers were moving and liking it. Masked and bound, watched by two disinterested creatures whose only pleasure was giving him pain and then laughing about it. Their lips twisted with mocking. Close enough to step on him with their skewering stilettos. What would Sabrina think if she saw how much he liked it?</p>
<p>Sabrina used to look at him like he was something she wanted but could not have. It was a lip-biting look, nervous and desirous. Now her eyes are always wet and glossy with tears she’s too afraid to shed. And when they’re not, she’s so brittle, trying so hard to cheer him up, find any little thing to make him smile. She wants so badly for him to be okay and doesn’t know what to do with the fact that he isn’t, and might not ever be.</p>
<p>Nick shuts his eyes tight as tears streak down the sides of his face to his temples. His body is a tight curve as he rolls against his hand, restlessly assailing that spot inside him that’s so mysteriously electric. He can feel the orgasm skating against his fingers and then away, close and far, a build-up of feeling deep, deep down. It’s an exorcism. Something is being dredged up in him, dragged out. He’s on fire, his heart could stop, he could shatter. His hand starts to cramp but he doesn’t dare pull out to shake it or stretch, just doubles down because he’s so close, he knows he’s close —</p>
<p>When he comes, he throws his shoulders back against the floor, his hips all the way up and feet flat on the ground, arching and fucking into his own hand. He half-expects to find his heart on the outside of his body. But as he collapses into a boneless, breathless heap, it’s clear that everything is where he left it. He extracts his fingers carefully. And in the absence of pleasure, in the aftermath of it, he feels such a wide gnawing emptiness that he could fall into it forever, like a looking-glass. </p>
<p>Salo kneels beside him. She pushes the mask off and then gently cups his head to lift it, dribbling something from a bottle into his slack mouth. Nick licks his lips and tastes licorice. Absinthe. He parts his lips for more. “Good boy, she murmurs, but Nick doesn’t like to be called that either. </p>
<p>He turns his face away, then his body. He rolls onto his side so he can get back onto his hands and knees, rising up with a wavering unsteadiness. He tries to stand, but he’s useless and limp, and suddenly both Salo and De Sade are at his side to help unfold him. Their hands are kind now as they get Nick upright, but he feels weighted down and dense like coming out of water after a long swim. He’s sore in strange places after a session — his jaw, the outsides of his thighs, deep in his traps. It’s like there are parts of his body he didn’t know, or had forgotten about, that had been long dormant. </p>
<p>Perhaps every part of him had not been invaded. </p>
<p>“Stay still,” De Sade says, but it isn’t an order; he uses the same soft voice Salo had when she called him a good boy. He has a wet cloth in his hand to clean Nick off with. Salo unlatches the collar, the cuffs, rolls up the chains to take them away. Nick is untethered. She even unfurls his hand to gently touch the half-moon marks marring his palm, but he jerks away from both of them.</p>
<p>“I didn’t ask for that,” Nick says testily. His whole body will be bone-sore tomorrow, but he won’t feel it. There are salves for the skin and tinctures for pain, flasks and bottles and herbs. He can do it for himself. </p>
<p>He drags his jeans back up even though the button is missing and they don’t close all the way. He takes his belt back and picks up his shirt from where it had been thoughtlessly discarded. He’s out the door before he’s even dressed. He doesn’t need to be treated like some fragile thing. </p>
<p>Inflicting pain on others had not made Nick feel better or forget. Torturing Blackwood’s flesh Acheron had done nothing. But the pain had to go somewhere, because it lived in him. He had to put it somewhere. It’s his pain; he chooses it.</p>
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